4 FM quick reads on maintenance management1. Lighting Upgrades and the Bottom Line

Retrofitting the lighting system in any institutional or commercial facility is challenging for any maintenance and engineering manager.

But the challenge becomes even more daunting when the facility in question is a 1.6-million-square-foot regional medical center that provides round-the-clock service to the entire gamut of patients across several counties. The retrofit of the Georgia Regents Medical Center in Augusta required strong communication between in-house maintenance crews, contractors and the medical staff to ensure work was completed as efficiently as possible without interrupting patient care.

"When you are changing out ballasts and lights, sometimes you have to kill the power," says Jimmy Taylor, the medical center's electrical services manager. "It's hard to do that when you're talking about being in a hospital, and you are going to tell the staff or department that you have to turn off lighting in the area.

"It was very challenging to come up with a timeframe. We needed to get it done, but we had to work around their schedule, which was sometimes tough because things run 24/7. That was one of the toughest challenges, working with the staff, but they worked well with us."

The initial investment for the medical center's lighting retrofit was about $433,000, which represented about 81 percent of the entire project, and the project's annual savings totaled $175,000 a year. The original return on investment was 2.4 years.

2. Managing a Retrofit To Preserve History

Even a building with stunning architecture needs a makeover eventually. After more than 80 years of service to the state of California, the time for a makeover finally came for the Stanley Mosk Library and Courts Building in Sacramento.

Considered a masterwork of neo-classical design, the library and courts building was built in 1928 and named to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The building covers 188,000 square feet, six floors, and a full basement.

Preserving the grandeur of its early 20th Century style while bringing 21st Century energy efficiency was the primary goal of the $65 million project, says Pella McCormick, project director with California's Department of General Services.

Once construction crews got inside the walls to renovate plumbing, electrical and HVAC systems, they braced for curveballs that might come their way.

"It was actually like a treasure hunt between the walls," McCormick says. "The way they built this thing was like there's massive exterior masonry walls, and what you see inside them is like plaster over black iron. It looks very massive on the inside, and it's really kind of a shell, somewhere between 8 inches and 3 feet of cavity between the shell and actual structure of the building."

More surprises loomed as the crew renovated a plumbing system that had been worked on over the years but only in piecemeal fashion. McCormick says that was one of the project's bigger challenges.

"There had been so many renovations over the years that when we started opening up walls and ceilings, what we found in no way resembled any of the documentation we had," she says. "We basically initiated some of the demolition and had a team from the designers and contractors work together to document the entire plumbing layout. They basically had to redesign the entire plumbing system on the fly — a fairly monumental task so as to not affect any of the ongoing construction."

The plumbing system was updated with standard copper pipes and cast-iron waste lines and some of the old cast-iron porcelain fixtures were reused. They also installed low-flow faucets that use 0.5 gallons of water per minute (gpm), toilets that use 1.28 gallons per flush (gpf), and urinals that use 0.125 gpf. Early projections indicate the changes could produce a potential 55 percent decrease in potable water usage.

3. Maintenance: Focus on Work-Order Management

Scheduling work orders causes significant pain and heartburn for most maintenance and engineering departments trying to escape the grasp of chaos and become world-class organizations.

Maintenance and engineering managers have tried work-order scheduling in many forms, but most have found only limited success because they overlook key strategies and building blocks essential for making work-order scheduling successful. One of the first issues managers need to address is the reason they want to schedule. In other words, why is it important to the department, the organization and customers?

The first reason is that it can improve customer service. We must have a structured maintenance process that allows us to promise to our customers when we will be on the job site to perform the promised work. Think of waiting for the cable guy. Departments too often continue the habit of promising to do things but then rarely showing up on time. The results are reduced customer satisfaction, lower morale, and increased daily work chaos.

If we want to improve customer satisfaction and customers' willingness to work with the maintenance organization, we must be reliable and perform as we promise. Doing so will change their perception of the maintenance department and change the perception of maintenance from being part of the problem to being part of the asset-management solution.

The second reason work-order scheduling is important is that it improves labor efficiency. If departments successfully schedule work, the cost to perform that work drops significantly because planners can better coordinate labor and materials. When the cost to perform work drops, it indicates technicians completed the work more efficiently, meaning the maintenance department can complete more work with the same amount of staff.

The third reason for work-order scheduling is that it improves the work's quality and increases worker safety.

4. Maintenance Strategies: Technician Training

The Des Moines (Iowa) School District has made a major commitment to sustainability in recent years. Of its 52 schools, 38 have undergone renovations and upgrades that led to an Energy Star rating by earning a score of at least 75 on a 0-100 scale.

And in tackling the number of renovations and upgrades the district does — especially when those projects involve newer, more advanced technology — managers have gone to great lengths to ensure technicians have the training necessary to maintain the equipment properly.

"We have a very well-trained staff of maintenance people," says, Dave Silver, the district's facilities director. "One of the first things that happens when we take possession of a building is owner training supplied by the contractors or system manufacturers. We have what's called owner training, and there are two levels. It's one level for my people who maintain the systems and actually work on them, and there's one level for operations staff."

District technicians also are involved in project design — not a typical scenario in commercial and institutional facilities — which illustrates the team approach the district takes in executing renovations and equipment upgrades. That approach is particularly evident in the relationship between Silver and his boss, Bill Good, who understands the importance of investing in existing buildings and the role the facilities department plays in prolonging the life of those buildings.

Says Silver, "I felt like there was an opportunity to save money and energy for several years. Bill was way ahead of us when he came on board. He already had a very good energy-conservation program at his former employer. It was an easy marriage. I was thankful. There wasn't any selling to Bill. It was more Bill coming to me saying he wanted to do this. I was anxious to jump on the bus as soon as he opened the door."